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COVID-19 OOH Insights May 11-17

Where is movement increasing and decreasing? The results may surprise you

The week of May 4, we saw almost national increases in movement around Out-of-Home (OOH) properties. This week, we turned again to our OOH COVID-19 Dashboard to find out if the trend of increased movement continued into the week of May 11 through May 17. Ubimo’s data showed that, nationally, movement was down -3.7% the week of May 11 compared to the previous week. What does the story look like at a Designated Marketing Area (DMA) level?

Increased Movement in Surprising DMAs

The majority of DMAs experienced decreases in movement, except for 33 DMAs. Of those whose movement increased, notably, two DMAs hard hitby COVID-19, Detroit and New York, actually had increased movement the week of May 11 through May 17. In Detroit, foot traffic was up by 4.7%. In New York, it was up by 4.2%. Overall movement in these cities is still well below what it was pre-COVID, but they are continuing on an upward trend in movement around OOH.

Decreased Movement in Surprising DMAs

Most DMAs had decreased movement the week of May 11 through May 17. Included in those DMAs were some that experienced large increases the previous week, returning movement to pre-COVID levels. Oklahoma City was a DMA we highlighted in last week’s blogbecause traffic around OOH properties was higher than the pre-COVID period. However, the week of May 11, movement was down -12.2% compared to the previous week, which lead to lower movement compared to pre-COVID.

Another interesting finding was that Atlanta, located in one of the first states to reopen, actually experienced their lowest overall movement of the COVID period during the week of May 11 compared to any other week. Foot traffic in Atlanta was down -29.2% compared to pre-COVID levels.

How to continue to reach your customers during COVID-19

These DMA-level differences indicate that recovery is happening at a DMA level and is not consistent nationally. It also shows that movement can change from week to week and in surprising ways. That is why we at Ubimo believe that Digital Out-of-Home is an ideal advertising medium to connect with consumers and respond to the changing landscape during COVID-19. Using current and dynamic data sets, including Ubimo’sOOH COVID-19 Dashboard, DOOH campaigns can be planned, targeted, and adjusted effectively to reach customers and create impact. To find out more, contact us.

Methodology – To conduct this analysis, Ubimo is analyzing movement around 340k+ OOH properties nationwide with a radius of 0.05 miles. Lift is calculated by taking the percent change in visitors observed compared to the baseline week-over-week. The baseline is calculated based on average visitors observed by DMA between the weeks of 12/30/19 and 2/17/20.This independent analysis is based on Ubimo’s location intelligence platform. Ubimo data is always anonymized and aggregated.